Abstract:

In Turkey, the publications that official private bodies must publish according to the law are called "official announcement". The publication of these announcements to the newspapers is made in 8 provinces directly by the Press Advertising Authority, while the remaining 73 provinces are made through the governments. The official advertising application started with the purpose of supporting the local press is unable to reach its goal due to various problems. One of the main problems is that half of the total official announcement potential is given to 113 newspapers in 8 provinces. 80 percent of the official announcements received by these newspapers go to the newspapers published in Istanbul. More than 700 newspapers published in Anadolu share half of the total official announcements. On the other hand, official announcements constitute the basic income of many local newspapers. This has led to the birth of a type of newspaper, which is only published to receive the official announcement and is called the "Naylon newspaper", with a low-tyre, the content of which is covered from other newspapers and which is not accessible to the public. Problems seem to be solved to a certain extent by the serious monitoring of the criteria for the official announcement and by the amendment of the rules for the distribution of the official announcement. However, for a precise solution, local newspapers need to change their contents, techniques and journalism concepts. Thus, the total revenue of local newspapers will increase and the purpose of using official ads as a support will be achieved.